Easier to Run
by Ashley A
Summary: set directly after "Amends" season three. Award winning story in the "Feels Like Heaven, Hurts like Hell" fan fic awards.


A/N:  this is my first song fic.  This story takes place right after the episode "Amends" from BTVS season 3.  

Disclaimer:  all lyrics belong to Linkin Park.  Thanks for the inspiration, guys!

ME and Joss own all the characters and the universe, I just visit here.

Feedback:  It does a body good!

Enjoy.

It's easier to run

Replacing this pain with something numb

It's so much easier to go

Than face all this pain here all alone

Something has been taken 

From deep inside of me

A secret I've kept locked away

No one can ever see

Wounds so deep they never show

They never go away

Like moving pictures in my head

For years and years they've played

I lie silently with my head resting against the edge of my fireplace.  It's been a rough few days.  The snow didn't last too long; I knew it wouldn't.  When the hell does it snow in Southern California?

We just walked for hours that morning.  Not talking.  Just walking quietly.  Soul deep agony still ripped through me.  Hard to put days of incomprehension and insanity behind you quickly.

If I could change I would

Take back the pain I would

Retrace every wrong move that I made I would

If I could

Stand up and take the blame I would

If I could take all the shame to the grave I would

I know Buffy was right to do what she did.  But in my heart of hearts, I'm sorry she did, in a way.

Not in the suicidal tendencies kind of way.  I know now that it wasn't a good power that was trying to force me to meet the sunrise.  The First Evil is a serious big bad.

But if it wasn't the First that brought me back, why am I here?  

I should be suffering an eternity of torment in a hell demension, like I told Giles.

But I'm not.  I'm here, back in Sunnydale, back in the mansion where I nearly brought an end to everything I hold dear.

I bang my head softly on the brick, hoping to jar some sense into it.  I stop when I feel a trickle of cool liquid run down my neck.  Guess it wasn't as softly as I meant.

A little laugh escapes my lips, and I bend forward at the waist, clasping my hands around my knees, ignoring the blood running down my collar.

Sometimes I remember

The darkness of my past

Bringing back these memories

I wish I didn't have

Sometimes I think of letting go

And never looking back

And never moving forward so

There would never be a past

God, I hate being this confused.  Even as a young mortal man, it was the one thing I hated more than almost anything.  School, church, my father's lectures, I wasn't ready to understand any of it.  All I cared for was fun, and having my kind of fun didn't necessarily dictate understanding.  Being turned, that had required understanding I didn't have the energy for at the time.  And honestly, Angelus hadn't cared.  He only cared for the lust, the hunt, the kill.  No wonder Darla and I were such a match.  I learned it all from her.

Or did I?

Just washing it aside

All of the helplessness inside

Pretending I don't feel misplaced

Is so much simpler than change

Maybe it had been inherent in me from the beginning.  Maybe Liam would have turned out to be a drunken wife beater, a scourge on society, dying young and pitiless.  So is it better to have gone through what Angelus did just to become Angel, to have to understand, to be forced to live through so much torture every minute, just to comprehend what is right and what is wrong?

Sometimes it's easier to run, than to stand and fight.

Change is too difficult to even think about right now, as my blood runs down my neck, reminding me of all the blood spilt in confusions name, in those times when chaos reigned, and I hadn't had to think, I just had to be.

It's easier to run

Replacing this pain with something numb

It's so much easier to go

Than face all this pain here all alone

And then her face comes unbidden to my mind, and I stop my whirlwind of thought and agonized memory.  And something that she had said to me knocks at the back of my consciousness.

_Fighting is hard.  And it's every day._

And then she had told me it would be a little easier if we could do it together.  Two are always stronger than one.  And together we are infinitely strong.  

I realize I am standing in the garden at the front of my house, staring up at the now snow-free sky.  And the concept of understanding _why _suddenly doesn't seem so important any more.  

Maybe my time in the hell demension had just been over.  Maybe God, or whoever, needs me for a reason, maybe to fight the good fight just a little bit longer.  Or maybe just to be here for her.  To ease her burden, to take up some of the slack when she can't.  When she's so crushed by life that she can't do anything but just breathe.

I remember how that feels.  

I know what it's like to battle constantly, every day, just to exist.

And to question every day, why you bother.

My reason for bothering is her.  And the life, my life,  I almost foolishly destroyed when I felt it was the easy thing to do.  

I don't have to face the pain of the past all alone.  Not anymore.

As I watch the moon move slowly across the clear sky, I feel a small hand take mine as she quietly steps up next to me.  And I know that, yes, some days it is easier to run.  But other days, it's better to try and change, to understand, instead.


End file.
